Digital Story

https://www.powtoon.com/embed/g5ELo5ciN64/

This was one of the most pleasantly surprising things that I have accomplished in this class. Although it took me a few hours to get the hang of, and finally perfect, I feel extremely happy with my results. I had many challenges, such as my computer restarting in the middle of the presentation. Luckily for me, most of my slides saved. I also did not like hearing myself played back on the computer over and over, it’s definitely uncomfortable. Although there were a few challenges, I had an overall success with this project! I am so happy that I chose to use PowToon as my guide in making a digital story. Before I started, I was extremely intimidated and honestly expected to fail. I am happy to say that this project was something that I see myself using as directions when I have a substitute, information for my future classroom website/blog, and so much more. I hope that you guys take a moment to watch, and please feel free to let me know what you had success with.

ILP: Final Thoughts

My independent learning process has been an insane journey throughout this semester, that I was definitely not anticipating. My project was focused on cooking throughout this semester, learning different recipes, and being creative/inventive. I had an abundant amount of opportunities to learn different recipes, spoke with multiple people on nutrition, learned about health, read a lot, researched, and so much more. I had an amazing opportunity to discover my passion for cooking throughout the months and I am excited to share with you my success, and somewhat failure, of a story.

I had numerous ups and downs throughout this journey, that if you have followed me throughout my blogs you have witnessed. I have done my fair share of burning, overcooking, under-cooking, and complete forgetfulness. Although I did have my fair share of bad experiences, I definitely feel as though I had more success than failures throughout this journey which I think overall makes for a good experience.

I learned a lot about myself as well throughout this ILP project. I know that I am an incredibly impatient person, and that I definitely need to work on that. Throughout the weeks I have tried to become more and more patient with the food in order for it to turn out to be the best that it can be. During my first few weeks, I would stop cooking way too early and then I would discover that all of my food was under-cooked. Throughout the rest of the weeks I utilized timers, and really paid close attention to the directions that I was given for each of my meals.

One thing that I am so grateful to this independent learning project for is my new interest and love for nutrition. Before I started this journey I was a carb-enthusiast. I loved to eat anything from pizza, pasta, or anything with bread for that matter. I indulged a little too often and I often didn’t pay attention to the things I put in my body. As I began this project I discovered that I wanted to start a new lifestyle, and that’s exactly what I did. If you read any of my beginning posts you know that I met with a nutritionist to get some insight, and I began a Keto-diet. I have found so much success, and truly have become a healthier and happier person. Don’t get my wrong, I slip up here and there but I have developed a new appreciation for a healthier life style.

Overall, this ILP has been the highlight of my semester. I had anticipated a failure every week, and a lot of disinterest after a while, but boy was I wrong. I enjoyed each and every hour I put into this project. I loved that a part of my homework consisted of me cooking a new dinner option, and reading through cook books. I am extremely happy with the choice I have made to cook as my project, and I believe that I will continue to learn and grow for the rest of my life.

Online Creation Tools

https://create.piktochart.com/output/29546306-new-piktochart

Online creation tools are something that I was definitely not familiar with until this class, although they are an aspect of the digital world that I hope to continue using as another tool in my classroom. I had a lot of success with this tool, but I also had a few struggles when I first began. My journey along the use of online creation tools was overall a great one, and here is how it went.

I started by going to an article Online Creation Tools: Piktograph and Canva which was extremely helpful in the deciding process. I know that I can definitely be an indecisive person at times, especially when I am given numerous options. I appreciate this article because it showed me aspects of two websites, and then I was able to make my choice on which one I thought would best suit me. After reading through both of these I decided to use Piktochart, because it seemed to be the most user friendly. I knew that I would need a website that was fairly ‘dumbed down’ and easily navigable.

Piktochart was just the site for me! I decided that I wanted to take short cuts from the beginning and just try to figure it out without any insight. From the start I skipped over the video, thinking that I could just jump right in; boy was I wrong. I had no idea what I was doing, and I hadn’t a clue where to begin. After struggling for a bit, and getting a touch frustrated I decided to actually watch the helpful video. After watching this I was then able to actually accomplish something useful, without getting irritated.

My final piktochart came out great, in my opinion for a first timer. Here is where you can look at what I came up with for my ILP (cooking): new-piktochart_29546306 . I tried to make it fun, simple, and easy to look at. I figured my first online creation tool should be useful, and easy to replicate if necessary. I could definitely see myself using these for a fun way to create flyers for clubs, worksheets, quizzes, or direction sheets. Any way that you can implement creativity into a classroom you should do so. This can potentially inspire the students, keep things exciting in your class, and give the students something new to look at rather than the same boring worksheets.

Online creation tools can be used in an abundant amount of ways in the classroom, by both the students and the teachers. I think that this assignment was a great way to show us new tools, how we can use them, and a way to incorporate our Independent Learning Project. I always appreciate learning about new digital tools that I can utilize in my future classroom.

Digital Stories

This week I chose to specifically focus my blog post on digital stories, although I do love watching/listening to podcasts as well. I have always been familiar with podcasts, and I honestly enjoy listening to them in the car, while I do homework, or while I clean my apartment. I wanted to focus on the topic this week that I was more unfamiliar with, so that I could explore a new concept in this digital world.

I spent most of my time this week going through countless example stories, and finding ones that I enjoyed or related to. I will be honest, some of the stories come across boring at first although there are numerous digital stories that are phenomenal. I appreciate that most of them are between 3-8 minutes. My attention was kept at all times with most of the videos. A personal favorite from this week would have to be the story titled, Me and Coaching Story.

This video is all about taking your passion, and driving it into your future. For the narrator, she found a deep love for photography. We all know that there is an overwhelming fear in the idea of going through our lives. The future is scary, and there are many things that can hold us back as we try to become the best versions of ourselves. Throughout this video I found that life-coaches can be an amazing aide through hard times in someones life. I thought that this video was a great example of digital storytelling, but I wanted to know more about how I can use this concept as a future educator.

Leah Levy, author of Teacher’s Guide to Digital Storytelling, explains what digital story telling can do for your classroom, along with many other aspects of this concept. Throughout reading this article I discovered that digital storytelling can be a great way to incorporate creativity. As a teacher, I plan on making creative thinking a large aspects of  my classroom. This is helpful in getting the students excited about what they are doing, and get as much effort as possible.

I think that my most helpful tool this week was the article, Teacher’s Guide to Digital Storytelling. I appreciated how in depth Leah Levy went into how this topic pertains to teachers. After my research, I believe that digital story telling is a concept that I will bring in for specific projects, or maybe as an option for homework. Giving students options for their work load is a great way to keep the class creative, and alive. Overall I enjoyed learning about this new concept of digital storytelling, I am glad that I am more familiar with it.

 

ILP: My Sister’s the Expert

Since I can remember my sister, Danielle, has always been an amazing cook and baker. She has always been interested in making food, and spent a lot of time learning. I, if you have read any of my blogs on my independent learning project, was the complete opposite. I never wanted to take the time to learn about cooking, or baking because in my sassy little pre-teen/teenager mind, I had way more important things to do. This has unfortunately affected my adult life, because I soon realized that I needed to learn how to cook for myself.

When I was going through how I wanted to spend my ILP time this week, I thought I wanted to do something a little different. I have done recipe books, researched diet plans, talked to nutritionists, followed online cook books, and much more. The idea hit me to learn from my own sister when I was talking to her on the phone Monday, and she was making her own homemade Runza’s. I then immediately started asking her questions about her favorite cookbooks, people to follow, recipes to do, etc.

Through the intense questioning that I threw her way, she was more than happy to help me out. Danielle let me know that the Pioneer Woman, on Food Network, is basically her spirit animal. She then showed me cookbooks, and all of her sticky-noted recipes that she has had success with. Danielle definitely gave me a lot of inspiration to try new things, and keep branching out of my comfort zone. Although my ILP is cooking, this week I decided to follow one of my sisters favorite baking recipes.

I had a lot of success, and a lot of talk through sessions with my sister via Face time. I decided to replicate the Triple Chocolate Cookies that I found on the Pioneer Woman website. I had complete success with this, and I accredit that to Danielle. She walked me through everything, answered any questions I had, informed me on which ingredients to mix first, and so on.

Overall this was a great week! I enjoyed my ‘homework’ being baking, and chatting with my sister on the phone. I believe that Danielle had a lot of fun being the person that I came to, and she of course loves to talk about anything to do with cooking/baking. I had success with this recipe, and I also think that I found a new person to go to for any advice.

Technology Mindfulness?

What is technology mindfulness? I can tell you one thing for sure, this was a topic that I did not know existed, although it definitely still affects me. Throughout all of my readings, and videos I have come to believe that technology mindfulness is being aware of present moments rather than being dependent of some technological device. Once I started to read through each of the articles, one of them specifically stood out to me and made me want to challenge myself.

What Happens When Teens Try to Disconnect From Tech For Three Days was a great article to read, and the one that caught all of my attention. The title first pulled me in and made me want to read more on how teens do when they do not have access to technology. I definitely know that I depend on technology each and every day. I check up on social media, I keep in contact with friends and family, I take all online classes, I use my phone for work purposes, and honestly I just like feeling in the loop of life. I read how each of the young teenage boys did when they gave up their phones for three days, and I wanted to try it out.

This was quite the failure for me to be oh so honest. I challenged myself to last 24 hours without going on or looking at my phone, and I then found of that I felt a lot of anxiety leaving it at home while I left for the day. When I challenged myself, similarly to how the boys did in the article, I understood what some of them were saying about feeling disconnected and reaching for their phones automatically. I definitely felt out of the loop while I was at my desk job, although I occupied myself by getting a lot of my homework done. This was a positive aspect of the whole 8 hours that I lasted, although there were many struggles to follow.

When I was without my phone I did not realize that I was receiving emails from my boss (important ones at that), getting text messages from my mom asking about break plans, and much more. The breaking point for me to reach back into my desk and grab my phone was going to my other job, an Agent at an after-school program. This was something that I did not think about when I first gave my phone up, but when the kids get picked up all of the staff communicate through an App on our phones. This of course was when I took my phone back out, and I felt a sense of relief to have it back in my hands.

Although I did not last for too long, let alone 3 whole days, I am glad that I was able to challenge myself. It showed me how truly dependent I am on my phone, and really opened my eyes to technology mindfulness. I believe that after conducting this little experiment I will definitely be more mindful of how much attention and time I am dedicating to meaningless stuff, such as checking my social media. I learned how to better time manage, and how to put the phone away when I have things to get done. This was an overall great experience, and I encourage each and every one of you to give it a try for however long you can.

ILP: Struggle and Success

My Independent Learning project these past few weeks have shown a lot of success and definitely some failures. I decided that I wanted to take more of a risk, and follow a great website to find some more adventurous recipes. The website that I found is called Yummly.

The reason that I think this website is a challenge for me is because you plug in information on any preferences, protein, time limits, ingredient limits, etc. You then are given an abundant amount of recipes to choose from, and this is exactly what I have been working on this week. Every night I have picked a new recipe to follow, and let’s just say it was a roller coaster ride.

On Monday night I had extreme failures. This included buying a few wrong ingredients for my chicken stir fry. I assumed that I could substitute in something different, which I learned that I am not experienced enough to know I can and cannot sub. The stir fry was okay, definitely not my best work. A few of the veggies that I mixed in were not properly cooked. Some of them were definitely perfect, others were soggy and overcooked which resulted in some pretty weird textures. This was my biggest struggle of the week, but I am glad that it started to look positive by Wednesday night.

In the middle of this week I decided to take another recipe from this site, and create Balsamic Chicken with Roasted Vegetables. This recipe was absolutely delicious, and I nailed it! It took me about 45 minutes to complete, but it was all worth it. I also appreciate on this website that the time limits they expect are really accurate so that you can time manage. They also include the calorie count, which is helpful for me who is still on a health kick! This was a great success, and I enjoyed sharing a delightful meal with friends that I actually made myself.

Overall I had a lot of fun going through this website during the week, and being more adventurous with my food. I love looking through the pictures, recipes, time limit, etc. The website is user friendly, and adapted just to you! I encourage you all to take a look at it if you feel like you need to get some fun recipes to spice up your cooking!

Digital Activism

When I first started reading about this topic I assumed that it was a whole other realm of digital-something that I was unaware of. I was pleasantly surprised to read that digital activism is how activists can utilize digital technology. This is a topic that I have never heard about, but once I understood the purpose I felt confident that I would learn the concepts quickly.

I spent a lot of my time diving into The 6 Activist Functions of Digital Tech in order to further my understanding of how activists live in the digital world. This website was absolutely filled with information that I feel was necessary to understand. I appreciated how they broke down this concept into 6 different functions; shape public opinion, plan an action, protect activists, share a call to action, take action digitally, and transfer resources.

There are many things that you could consider yourself and ‘activist’ for. I know that this term is often off-putting to people, but you may be one without even knowing it. According to Google Dictionary, an activist is “a person who campaigns to bring about political or social change”. If you are a human being, you automatically have your own thoughts and beliefs. Some of you may not take action on them, but you may want to bring a social or political change at some point in your life. So how do you do this digitally?

Rather than sitting here and boring you with my breakdown of all six functions of digital activist’s, I have chosen my favorite number. Number five states that can partake in being a digital activist by taking action digitally. This can be through a number of different ways such as; signing an e-petition, donating money to an organization, promoting a foundation/movement via social media, and much more. I definitely believe in freedom of speech, and choice, as I am sure many of you do. I think that social media is a great platform to express yourself, respectfully, because people have the choice to see what you post or not.

I could go on and on about this topic, because I do believe that you are able to be an activist in a respectful manner. Standing up for what you believe in should not ever be an issue, and I hope that people all understand that everyone is entitled to their own opinion. I appreciate informative articles such as The 6 Activist Functions of Digital Tech that give you a variety of ways you can be a digital activist.

Here is a helpful video on digital activism:

Googling Tori Nielsen

Well, this is definitely something that I never saw myself doing but I am glad that I have done it now. Luckily for me, I have always been cautious about what I post online. I have always been taught that things that are posted can, and will always be there. I also like to think of myself as a fairly confidential person, and have all of my accounts set to private for all of my social media. For the most part, I was not surprised with what I found online. There was one thing that definitely one thing that creeped me out a bit.

To start, let’s chat about what was not surprising. When I first Googled my name I found my social media pages, which I was unable to get any info from other than a Profile picture. The more I looked into it I found a couple of pictures of myself with friends, definitely a little embarrassing but nothing that would raise questions. I also found a handful of other “Tori Nielsen’s” in the world, which was yet another unsurprising search.

I saw a link to the White Pages, which oddly knew both of my parents, sister, and cousins name. I was a little confused by this, especially since it had my dads first name, which he never goes by. I would love to know how these websites find all of this information, or at what point did they connect  me to my relatives. There was also a fake phone number posted, which I was happy to see. For the most part, there wasn’t anything too interesting on me that you could find on the world wide web. I am glad that I was able to do this search, because I know that employers often do this before hiring a person for a position. However, there was one thing that I was not expecting to find.

This may not be a huge deal to people, and it is potentially public information for everyone online, but I found it to be a little eerie. When I Googled my name, there was a website I found called Spokeo. This website had everything on me, or so they claim. You have to purchase the information, which I also find a bit odd. They claim to know my phone number, location history, relationship status, contact information, and much more. The part that I really did not like was that they had a Google map of where my home is located. For some people, this may not seem like a huge deal, but to me it was a little weird. They have my exact address and a map to show it. Although I don’t believe people would ever really dig for my address, it is still a little unsettling that you can.

For the most part, I enjoyed every minute of this assignment. I honestly had fun Googling myself, and seeing what the results were. I appreciate the opportunity to have some time to see what the Internet has on me, and I am happy to say that there is nothing that I would ever be worried of. A word of advice to everyone, remember that your digital footprint never really goes away.

Digital Citizenship

Digital citizenship is yet another topic that I never knew would be important to understand and fully research, although I am glad that I have now. When I first saw the lengthy list for our assignment in Digital Literacy this week I will admit I panicked a bit. I was worried because the entire topic of our week was something that I had never even heard of. I can happily say that I now fully understand, and look forward to utilizing my knowledge of digital citizenship in the future.

When I read my first article, The Definition Of Digital Citizenship I found a plethora of helpful information. To start, I found the definition of this concept to be: “the quality of a response to membership in a digital community”. When you really start to break down digital citizenship you can see that it truly pertains to each and every person who may find themselves online at one point in their lives. When we log into our  favorite social media, we don’t take a second to realize that we are a part of a community, or a citizen of it. Through this article I found that there are numerous ways to define digital citizenship that basically all point back to the same main idea. After reading through all of the information I definitely feel as though I have a strong hold on the concept, although I wanted to know how I would relate this back to my future career as an educator.

With becoming a citizen in any aspect, physically or online, there is a certain way that you are taught to behave and present yourself. This could be a great concept that I could teach my students in the future, in order to have them understand the importance of being a positive citizen, digitally. According to Edutopia, digital citizenship has “guidelines for responsible, appropriate behavior when one is using technology. But specifically, it can cover anything from “netiquette” to cyberbullying; technology access and the digital divide; online safety and privacy; copyright, plagiarism, and digital law, and more.” I find this to be an extremely beneficial concept to inform my students of in the future, regardless of their age. Digital citizenship is a concept we all need to be aware of in order to present ourselves well online.

Overall, this topic was one that surprised me in a very positive way. I am so glad that each and every week in our Digital Literacy class I find another concept that will help me in my future as both an educator, and a person in society. This is a great way to incorporate technology in the classroom, while still showing the students positive ways to leave their digital footprint.